Duchess of York amongst phone hacking settlements

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, has settled her claim. Picture: AP

CATHY GORDON and JAN COLLEY

The Duchess of York headed a list of 17 people who settled their phone-hacking damages claims in court today.

She received a “comprehensive and categoric” apology and a “significant payment in damages” from News Group Newspapers (NGN), said solicitor Paul Tweed after the announcements at London’s High Court.

“Notwithstanding this successful outcome, my client remains extremely concerned that questions beyond the scope of these legal proceedings still need to be answered in relation to other instances of inappropriate and extreme intrusion into her private life,” said Mr Tweed, senior partner at law firm Johnsons.

Other celebrities who received damages, costs and a public apology from NGN were singer James Blunt, actors Christopher Eccleston and Hugh Grant, entertainer Uri Geller, former Labour minister Geoffrey Robinson, actress and singer Kerry Katona, and presenters June Sarpong and Jeff Brazier.

Less well-known names included anthropologist and adventurer Christopher Terrill, Hilary Perrin, Labour’s director of regional organisation, and Richard Reardon, the parish priest of singer Charlotte Church and her parents.

None of the payments were disclosed - except in the case of Colin Stagg, who was wrongly accused of the murder of Rachel Nickell - and is to receive £15,500 plus costs.

David Sherborne, counsel for the Duchess of York, told Mr Justice Vos: “During the period from 2000 until 2006 the claimant experienced unusual activity on her mobile phone.

“The claimant also noticed that journalists and/or photographers appeared to know her location in advance, meaning that when she arrived at functions or planned events, it was often the case that journalists or photographers were already present.”

She commenced proceedings last year for “misuse of private information, breach of confidence and harassment in respect of the interception of her telephone messages”.

He told the court that the Duchess was “targeted” and voicemail messages on her mobile phone “were intercepted for the News of the World over a considerable period of time”.

He added: “I am here today to announce that NGN has accepted liability and agreed to pay damages to the claimant plus her legal costs.”

Anthony Hudson, for NGN, offered its “sincere apologies” for the damage and the distress caused.

“NGN acknowledges that the information should never have been obtained unlawfully in the manner in which it was, and that NGN is liable for misuse of private information and breach of confidence.”

Hugh Grant, who is to donate all his damages plus an additional personal donation to Hacked Off, the campaign for a free and accountable press, was targeted at various times from about 2004 until the closure of the News of the World.

His solicitor-advocate Mark Thomson said: “The claimant was particularly distressed to learn that he had wrongly mistrusted and avoided certain friends and acquaintances in the past, and would never find out the full extent of the defendant’s misuse of his private information.”

Mr Sherborne said that Christopher Eccleston was a private individual who has always taken care to keep his personal life out of the press and was “shocked and distressed” to discover his voicemail had been intercepted on 16 separate occasions.

The court heard that James Blunt’s concern at being targeted was exacerbated by the fact that, during the relevant period, he was in telephone contact with serving members of the armed services who were on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr Thomson said that the defendant’s unlawful activities caused distrust and arguments between Jeff Brazier and the late Jade Goody, with whom he had two children.

“He is very distressed that he can now never apologise to Ms Goody for the times that he did not believe her despite her denials that she was the source of particular private information in the public domain.”

During the hearing - the 13th case management conference ahead of a trial in June to assess compensation in any outstanding actions - Hugh Tomlinson QC said that 144 out of the 169 claims on the register had settled.

Currently, seven cases appeared to be definitely proceeding to trial because settlement negotiations had not been successful.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.